Photo of Trump with Black women supporters is AI fabrication | Fact check
The claim: Photo shows Black women supporting Trump
An Aug. 3 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a screenshot of a picture shared on X, formerly Twitter. In it, President Donald Trump poses with a group of Black women in formal dresses.
“They are afraid of black women supporting Trump because when we do, we drop the hoodrat act, and the left hates classy women!” the text above the image reads.
The Facebook post was shared more than 800 times in three days.
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The image is fabricated. The creator of the picture confirmed to Paste BN it is AI-generated. An expert in digitally created images pointed out telltale clues that it’s not real, including multiple hands with the wrong number of fingers.
Hands, hair, texture shown in image all signs of AI
Sharika Soal, the X user who first shared the picture on Aug. 3, is a writer and content creator for The Gateway Pundit. Soal told Paste BN that she created the image.
“I am a Black woman and my intention was to show people an ILLUSTRATION of modestly dressed, classy Black women supporting Trump,” Soal wrote via email. "People lost their minds and are now pretending I didn't make the photo and that they can't discern by simply looking at the photo to see it is aII digital art or simply scroll my page and see that I am an AI digital creator."
Britt Paris, an assistant professor of library and information science at Rutgers University, told Paste BN there are several clues viewers can spot to see that it's fabricated. One is a “sheen and smoothness" in the picture that is "characteristic of an AI-generated image,” Paris said.
“Most glaringly, Donald Trump has hair – like the hair of the other women around him – seemingly coming out of the nape of his neck, as if he's superimposed onto another woman in a picture taken in real life; or, more likely, it is an artifact of AI manipulation in Photoshop, or even a less sophisticated generative AI application," she said.
Another sign is that nearly all of the hands of the women appear to be disfigured with extra or blurry fingers. Some of their hands are also placed on Trump’s shoulders or around each other in a disjointed way.
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Paste BN has debunked numerous AI-generated images involving Trump, including a fabricated image of the former president at a cookout with Black supporters, another purportedly showing him being taken into police custody after his May conviction and another falsely depicting him leading a large crowd down a street.
Paste BN reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Our fact-check sources:
- Britt Paris, Aug. 5, Email exchange with Paste BN
- Sharika Soal, Aug. 6, Email exchange with Paste BN
- @SharikaSoal84 (archived), Aug. 3, X post
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